THERE are few things in this universe more pointless than our Conservative government, although to be fair this new so-called Unionist astroturfing discussion forum These Islands runs them close.

For starters there’s no point in Scotland having a discussion about the shape of the Union. We get whatever Westminster decides is in its own interests and Scotland doesn’t get a look-in. How about discussing how a Scotland within the Union can still remain a part of the EU like we voted for twice?

Oh. Right. Looking for answers from a pro-Union think-tank is like asking Amanda Holden to conduct a rigorous interview. You’d be as well setting up a discussion forum about the changes you’d like to make to the physical laws of the universe.

Personally I’ve always felt that gravity makes things too heavy, especially when I’m trying to take the shopping up the stairs to my flat. The difference is that my grocery lifting issues with the force of gravity won’t be making headline news on Reporting Scotlandshire and plastered all over Scotland’s overwhelmingly anti-independence print media any time soon.

Probably because I’m a vile separatist. I just need to find a way of blaming the SNP for the weight of three dozen tins of dog food and then I could be interviewed on the telly looking concerned and worried.

The sad truth for the astroturfers of These Islands is that if all their Oxford dons and supposed big hitters can’t come up with a case for the Union that’s anything more than British nationalist nostalgia or trite platitudes about punching above our weight, there’s no case to be made.

The redundancy of the new forum is enshrined in its very name. These Islands encompass two sovereign states, the UK and Ireland, so we’ve already established the principle that just because we’re all part of the same archipelago we don’t all need to be governed by Westminster. Moreover a Westminster which is as inept as whoever it was who came up with the “These Islands” monicker.

Next up they’ll be arguing for a unitary state in the Iberian peninsula because after all it’s a clear geographical and cultural unit. The people of Gibraltar and Portugal will be thrilled and the Catalans and Basques will give up their campaigns for self-determination. It promises to change gravity in order to make it easier for them to humph three dozen tins of dog food up four flights of stairs. Which is as plausible as the promise that they’ll be equal and respected partners in a family of nations.

Ireland is the big black hole in Unionism’s “links between the nations of these islands” argument. Scotland’s links to Ireland are every bit as strong as its links to England and Wales. In fact in some ways they are stronger. Scotland began life as Dalriada, an Irish colony, which means that Scotland is the only country in the world which can accuse Ireland of imperialism. For thousands of years our two countries have exchanged people, culture, ideas and for much of the middle ages formed a single linguistic zone, both part of a huge Gaelic speaking area stretching from Kerry to Caithness.

As far as historical, cultural, and family links go, there is nothing that Scotland shares with England and Wales that it doesn’t also share with Ireland. Our familial and cultural ties with Ireland are deep and strong, but that doesn’t mean that we should be governed by a government in Dublin. Mind you, we’d probably be better off if we were. At least we wouldn’t be facing the chaos of a Brexit negotiated by self-serving, right-wing idiots whose ideological attachment to the market is exceeded only by their incompetence.

Unionism is all about the appearance of things, not the reality. As long as there’s someone willing to propagate the fiction that Scotland is a partner in a Union and not a part of a unitary state in which British nationalism is merely a cover term for what English nationalism gets up to in the dark, we’ll have organisations like These Islands. Even at the best of times it’s an exercise in delusion.

We were promised the strength and stability of the UK, instead we get the bumbling incompetence of Theresa May’s government and the chaos of Brexit. We can’t accuse the hardline Brexiteers in the Cabinet of losing their minds, because that implies they had minds in the first place. Deep in the oceans there are creatures called sea squirts which eat their own brains as they metamorphise from larval stage into adult. If this Tory government were sea squirts, they’d die of starvation.

The promises of the independence campaign in 2014 will forever remain hypothetical, the promises of Better Together can be compared with reality, and in every case they’re found wanting.

The key promises of the Better Together campaign in 2014 were that Scotland would gain enhanced and strengthened devolution, that we’d be an equal partner in a family of nations, that we’d continue to benefit from the security and stability of the UK, and that a no vote was the only way to ensure that Scotland remained a part of the EU.

Every single one of those promises has been trashed, trashed by the Unionists themselves, and no amount of Unionist thinktankery can alter that reality any more than it can change the force of gravity.

Respecting the 2014 referendum shouldn’t just apply to those who lost it, it also needs to apply to those who won, and the British state has signally failed to respect the promises and commitments it made to the people of Scotland in order to secure that no vote in 2014.

Until that changes, and there is no sign it ever will, Unionist think-tanks are nothing more than an attempted exercise in the justification of hypocrisy. Scotland’s overwhelmingly Unionist media will lap it up.